Downtown assault victim shares story, hopes to promote change

Apr. 26, 2013

Donflyn Kerradel

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She was wearing a hood on an unusually cold day in April. Maybe that’s what made him suspicious, she thought.

From the other side of a downtown Springfield parking lot, he hollered something. She couldn’t quite make it out.

She stopped and turned. A 260-pound man with tattoos on his face closed the distance between them.

Maybe she had dropped something and he was returning it. Maybe he needed directions.

You can’t judge a book by its cover. She learned that a long time ago.

He asked: “What are you — a dyke?”

She had heard the slurs before, but this time, from a stranger growing hostile, she was confused.

It wasn’t like her time at Hillcrest High School, when she was ridiculed for being weird and described as a “loner.”

Donflyn K. Kerradel

She has dealt with changing churches often, when judgmental glances from a congregation made her feel uncomfortable.

She can handle when a girlfriend’s parents flip out when they discover their daughter dates a girl. “I don’t know if they think it’s wrong or gross or what.”

Maybe this stranger on the street would try to convince her she wasn’t gay, like other guys have done.

“You don’t know what you’re missing because you aren’t giving it a chance,” they would say. But they don’t understand it’s not about the sex; she prefers the companionship of women.

But now, in a public parking lot on the corner of McDaniel and Patton, she faced something else.

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“God made me first. Men and women are supposed to be together,” she says the stranger said to her. He appeared to grow more agitated. She noticed a tattoo of a teardrop on his cheek – “I’ve seen enough movies to know what that means.”

Maybe she could confuse him, lie and say he was mistaken — that, in fact, she wasn’t gay.

It’s worked before. For a time during her sophomore year of high school, she dressed “girly” and gossiped with other teenage girls. “Wow. Look, that boy is cute,” she would say, pretending to be attracted.

“It’s ridiculous I had to do that to make friends.” But now when she thinks about it, “were they really friends anyway?”

It never crossed her mind to tell this stranger she was straight. “That’s not who I am.”

Instead, she decided to turn and walk away. She’s usually the more mature one in confrontations about her sexuality.

Then, “he just popped me.” Punched her in the face with a closed fist, is how police would later describe it.

It hurt.

“It sucked actually.”

A fractured nasal cavity is what the doctor said. Cops called it a broken nose.

Today, her teeth hurt when she eats.

But strangely, “the thing that bothers me the most” was that it could have been someone else, she said.

It would have somehow been more tragic if a straight woman, dressed like she was that night, had been mistaken for a homosexual and assaulted, she said.

After all, she can handle it.

It’s been more than seven years since she “came out”; 21-year-old Alicia Otero has accepted a level of harassment. A part of her is always prepared for it.

“I’ve really had a hard time being who I am.”

The physical pain exacted by one stranger doesn’t compare with the emotional suffering she has, at times, been forced to bear.

She’s not alone, she added. She’s watched others anguish over hiding their sexuality or being ridiculed because of it.

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She said they have to hide it at their jobs and be careful who they let in close.

It hurts the most, she said, when rejected by close friends and family.

“Those are the people you love. Those are the people that have been with you.

“That would be a lot more difficult than getting punched in the face.”

In this video shot on April 4, Donflyn Kerradel repeatedly curses Springfield police and is eventually arrested and faced a trespassing allegation. He is now in jail accused of punching a woman in the face on April 13.

Almost a week after the alleged assault, Otero had not told several of her friends about it. She doesn’t want them to be afraid.

Meanwhile, she’s been taking a taxi to work instead of walking.

But the fear is fading. She has agreed to fully cooperate with prosecuting Donflyn K. Kerradel, 20, a man the police have called a downtown troublemaker, who has been charged in the assault.

She told this newspaper her story and allowed her name to be shared with the community.

She would, if asked, share her experience with a City Council subcommittee currently tasked with researching whether “sexual orientation” should be added to the city’s nondiscrimination policy.

She feels she doesn’t deserve the “spotlight” but she wants to try to help change the culture in Springfield.